Monday, March 10, 2008

Seething Dems

"She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals -- whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband's serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man."

So writes Seth Grahame-Smith this morning at HuffPo, and that's just the beginning of a verbal unloading on Hillary (more than Bill, although he's swept up in it too) that leaves you wondering: If Grahame-Smith is aware of all this stuff, how could he have ever been for her anyway? How could he have defended her for 17 years, as he said he did, knowing that this is just Hillary Clinton being Hillary Clinton?

Mitt Romney recognized he wasn't going to win it, and stepped aside, leaving the nomination much less contested for John McCain. The seething anger we see throughout Grahame-Smith's piece could have been avoided if Clinton had realized what Mitt Romney recognized, but that's not in her genes.

So, rather than step aside and become the hero of her party, she made a strategy decision to go negative in advance of Ohio and Texas. Not just negative -- personal. She cynically chided Mr. Obama's message of hope. She played the victim card. The gender card. The Muslim card. ...

She accused Mr. Obama of his own shady business deals (the irony of which nearly ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time). She accused him of being two-faced on NAFTA, when it was her campaign that had winked at the Canadians.

There's nothing new in the HuffPo piece; it's all rehashed, recycled and previously reported. But it is a gauge of the anger that's present in the Dem party now, and the needle is buried deep in the red zone. He sees it as a no-win for the Dems, and seeing it so, this 17-year Clinton man agrees with Samantha Power that Hillary is a monster:

And if she does manage to secure the nomination, what about the scores of disenfranchised Obama supporters (many of them young people with little loyalty to the Democratic Party)? How will she bring them back into the tent? Hillary seems confident that this can be remedied by offering Mr. Obama a spot on her ticket. Really? And what would his motivation be for accepting? Playing third-fiddle to Bill?

However, if Mr. Obama goes on to secure the nomination, she'll have handed his rival a treasure trove of sound bites. All John McCain has to do between August and November is play clips of Hillary questioning Obama's experience and belittling his platitudes. In a way, she'll have become Mr. McCain's second running mate.

There's one little piece Grahame-Smith brings up that I'd forgotten. He chides Hillary for chiding Obama on his lack of foreign policy experience, noting that Bill Clinton, when elected, had less foreign policy experience than Obama has.

Times were different, but the reality of the Democrats hasn't changed. Threats to America are only seen from within. It's "Bush tromping on our rights" that rallies them, not "Al Qaeda drawing blood, and wanting more."

But that's an argument for after the conventions. Over the next few months, we will see the heart of the Dem party break as former Clintonites like Grahame-Smith seethe over the damage being done, and young Obamaniacs get a harsh dose of ugly political reality. The wound is destined to become much more infected by the time the Dems (with Florida and Michigan or without?) limp into the convention hall.

We always knew Hillary was a ball-breaker. Now we know she's a heart-breaker, too.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.